Strawberry launches streamlined ‘Make It Easy’ investment service

25/02/2015

Strawberry, the online direct-to-consumer platform today announces the launch of its new ‘Make It Easy’ investment service, providing low-cost managed portfolios from a minimum of £100 per month and with a management fee of 0.55% for SIPPs, NISAs and General Investment Accounts.

Intuitive, interactive and educational customer experience for more ease and less stress

From a minimum of £100 per month; investment management fee of 0.55%; and a total all-in cost of 0.90% including all dealing, administration and other account services

Strawberry’s ‘Make It Easy’ offering is designed to help simplify investment by offering an all-in-one, streamlined customer experience alongside investment solutions to match investors’ goals. This builds on the range of interactive planning tools, videos and online learning to help investors learn about investing, to help them make and manage their investment plan.

Strawberry Invest has chosen dynamically-managed Architas BirthStar® Target Date Funds as the investment engine that powers the new ‘Make it Easy’ service. Customers can select from a list of funds to match the target date of their investment goal to the date in the fund’s name. Customers can still opt for the ‘full choice’ service to design, build and monitor their own portfolio from any of 2,000 funds of Strawberry’s current ‘Pick Your Own’ offering.

James Priday, Founder and Director, Strawberry Invest:

“Strawberry Invest aims to make investing easier for our customers who want a straight forward, low cost and convenient way of doing their ISAs and pensions accounts by themselves. By offering the Architas BirthStar® Target Date Funds as a ready-made managed portfolio, we can give our customers the benefit of a professionally designed, carefully managed, affordable and low-cost investment solution. These funds allow investors to focus on deciding how much they need to invest and when they will need it, leaving the professionals to manage the asset allocation for them.”

Mike Morrow, Sales and Marketing Director, Ascentric:

“Many everyday investors lack affordable access to advice and are actively looking for easy to understand and easy to use alternative solutions. We are proud to provide the underlying administration to Strawberry’s ‘Make It Easy’ service and the platform back office, as well as hosting the Architas BirthStar® Target Date Funds for their customers. By providing economies of scale both in fund administration and through outcome-oriented collective investments, Strawberry’s new proposition can offer better value than its competitors, as well as targeting good outcomes for customers.”

Tom Cropper, Head of Strategic Partnerships, BirthStar®:

“We are delighted to be working with Strawberry and Royal London’s Ascentric with the repositioning of the User Experience to simplify the choice architecture, without restricting options, whilst introducing behaviourally-adapted investment solutions. Nobody wants to feel they need a PhD in finance to get their investments done. With the new ‘Make It Easy’ approach, we want to help Strawberry make investing easier for their customers, as well as more affordable and better value.”